Apart from the cost of maintenance to keep these "bird slicers" (a minor amount of carnage, of course, but I love the term) running, what they fail to tell you is that this variable power source requires a conventional power source as a backup: a fossil fuel burning one.
Now what they also give the impression is that when the wind stops blowing just as EastEnders starts, they press a button and the standby power station does the business.
Let me tell you, having worked on a power station and refinery in a former life, one does not simply press a big start button and voila: instant power. It can take several days to "black start" a power station.
In order to get the power to the grid quickly, the power station must be in "standby" mode i.e. its furnaces lit, the steam generated and pressured and possibly the turbines rotating.
So while these windmills are busy spinning away keeping the thicky green eco-nazis happy in blissful ignorance and couscous salads, a nasty old backup power station is quietly burning fossil fuels in the background.
Tax, tax and more tax and subsidies to large corporations.
These idiots simply wont be happy until horses are towing our Volvos.
Posts
And until the pressure is sufficient to feed the turbine the steam is just vented. Tens of megawatts for umpteen hours.
ReplyDeleteGo nuclear I reckon.
Indeed Xoggoth, go nuclear.
ReplyDeleteExcept that liebour have left it slightly too late, despite the constant protestations of many, so we look forward to an increasing population and an increasing chance of the liebour 70's style power cuts once again.
Thanks liebour. You evil bastards.
When every single last penny of what it actually costs in getting the raw materials out of the ground and bringing them to the factory in usable form along with all transport costs, labour cost and thousands of other costs involved right up to pouring tonnes of concrete into wildlife areas to erect these fairy wheels, then how long does a "Bird Slicer" have to be running before it actually makes a profit?
ReplyDelete....not to mention that these things seem to be made largely of concrete, a principal component of which is cement, an extremely energy-rich material.
ReplyDeleteManufacturing a ton of cement produces a ton of CO2.
How many days of operation to pay back the CO2 created in building just a single windmill?